


Prompt: Hated All Her Life

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [133]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Codependency, Forgiveness, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Jewish Wanda Maximoff, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 09:43:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11871699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: There’s all thisguilt.There always has been. This sense that, no matter what he does to try to make things right - for Yinsen, for Yinsen, who saw a him as a better man than he was, who died for the man he might become, who died because he had nothing left, Yinsen who had had everything taken from him by weapons Tony’s hands and mind had made... and who forgave, who did not forget, who fought anyway.Yinsen was one end of the spectrum. Wanda Maximoff and her now-dead brother... Tony supposes they would be the other.





	Prompt: Hated All Her Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fanfictionwriterinprogress](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fanfictionwriterinprogress/gifts).



> Written for a prompt, readable on my tumblr [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/164457381070/yes-hello-its-frostxiron-just-fyi-as-for-the).

**i.**  
After Novi Grad they leave her be. Not completely; there is always someone on the periphery - Clint or the Captain or new-made Vision - but they do not push her. They give her a place, get her a passport, give her more kindness than she deserves, and let her grieve in peace.

 

* * *

 

 **ii.**  
After Novi Grad Tony locks himself in his lab. He’s always had a lot going on that he doesn’t talk about - his dad and his issues with his dad, Obie and the issues with Obie, the weapons that were sold, under his watch or his father’s watch or Obie’s watch, all the  _harm_  he’s done, that he’s seen done, that he’s let happen because America’s right, right? 

No. America thinks might  _makes_  right - and sometimes he thinks Steve isn’t far off thinking the same thing himself these days. They’re the strongest team, the best team, the  _only_  team of their kind. Tony wonders how long before Steve decides the team should be beholden to no one - not even it’s own members.

There’s all this  _guilt._  There always has been. This sense that, no matter what he does to try to make things right - for Yinsen, for Yinsen, who saw a him as a better man than he was, who died for the man he might become, who died because he had nothing left, Yinsen who had had everything taken from him by weapons Tony’s hands and mind had made... and who forgave, who did not forget, who fought anyway.

Yinsen was one end of the spectrum. Wanda Maximoff and her now-dead brother... Tony supposes they would be the other.

 

* * *

 

 **iii.**  
They bury Pietro’s body. Wanda finds a Sokovian Rabbi from the lists of those evacuated, one who’d worked in Novi Grad, who’d worked at the synagogue their parents had attended. It’s not in a graveyard they bury him - Novi Grad is still a ruin, Wanda will not have him buried in an American one.

Clint makes a space on his farm and says, “Let him rest here.”

He is earnest, he is honest. He has done her no harm that was not in self defence. He looks her in her scarlet eyes, knows all the things her powers could do to him with an intimate agony that comes only from another remaking your mind against your will, and does not fear her. 

Every time Wanda goes to the Barton’s she sets a pebble by his grave.

 

* * *

 

 **iv.**  
Wanda did something to his head - to all of their heads, bar Barton’s. Clint is odd about it. Tells them what they already knew from Thor, but for all that happened with Loki he does not fear the witch, just offers some kind comfort, some fearless help in the face of all of it. Tony doesn’t know how he does it. If he had to face her without the team around, without the adrenaline rush of battle backing him, he thinks he’d fall back into the nightmare she’d made of his mind.

His was the first mind her scarlet had warped. He was the one, before all the team, her vengeance was set against.

After all, before everything else, it had been his bomb that had killed her parents.

 

* * *

 

 **v.**  
There is less of an anchor to the grief as time passes. It is there. Wanda does not think it will ever leave. But it numbs, it softens. It is like how her hands are now; where before they were in agony after a day of training now there is a numb pain, something that eases if she soaks her hands in warm water, or sits by the fire or a radiator. Sometimes, like her hands, it flares up, spiking agony from too much stress, something outside the ordinary bringing back the pain in a tidal wave.

But, slowly, it is easing. Wanda walks through the waves of grief, and tries to find who she is without her vengeance, without her city, without her brother - without the things that have always been at her side.

 

* * *

 

 **vi.**  
Tony can see the newsfeeds. He can see all of the newsfeeds. It is not hard to read between the lines. Oh, the aid offered to Sokovia before before some rich Doctor from a neighbouring country had swept in has helped - they remember that he tried to make amends, and mock him for it, but they know that he was there before Doom came in, speaking their language, offering them aid to their faces instead of hiding in guilt.

He is still hunting down his weapons, but it isn’t enough. He is still trying to offer help to Johannesburg but they are standing on their pride, telling him to leave, telling him to  _give them_  the building he bought and destroyed in trying to keep Hulk from harming anyone.

He does so. Sometimes, help is not what is needed. Sometimes, what is needed is space. Is for him to back off.

His hands itch, he ruins three prototypes, but he does so. He’s not good at showing apology, at remorse. He feels it, he feels guilt and remorse and responsibility so much it burns his bones, but expressing it -

He expresses it in silence. He expresses it in a fist to defend the world, in his mind working on something to shield everything.

(A shield which, when he made it, turned against them all.)

 

* * *

 

 **vii.**  
Wanda wonders how much they know. Do they know what she did to their minds? Do they know she cannot undo it, that she does not know how far the ripples of her scarlet pebbles have spread? Do they know that Ultron is as much her fault as Starks? Do they know that, for all their defence of her, their kindness to her, she has done things they should not defend, that she herself is the cause of death of her own  _brother._

She sent him away. She told him to fight alone, to let her fight alone.

She touched a mind and made fear from a wind to a hurricane. She made Ultron from a dream into reality.

She as guilty as any of them. Guiltier still. Pietro, oh Pietro, if he were here would tell her no, would tell her not to blame herself, would tell her that the fault was at Stark’s feet too, for the shells - sold or stolen - that killed their parents, that turned Sokovia into a warzone, that drove them to powers and poison and vengeance and violence. 

Pietro, though, is dead. There is no one to share vengeance with any more. No one to walk the city with any longer. 

Her brother’s heart beats no more.

 

* * *

 

 **viii.**  
“Stark,” Wanda says. She’s stood in the doorway of the lab, eyes glowing, scarlet at her fingertips, half wild as it has been since her brother died. She is getting better with it, he has seen the videos. It drips from her fingertips now, yes, but it is not the lashing waves it was at first, or the coiling snakes of scarlet that rose up around her shoulders when Clint tried to catch her.

It’s still there, though, not tamed to her veins as it was before Novi Grad. Tony wonders if it is because he is here, that they share a building, the proximity of someone she has hated all her life. He wonders if it is fear, if she thinks he seeks vengeance on her for her vengeance on him. Maybe it is grief, still raw from her brother, maybe it is her own guilt for her unwitting help in unleashing Ultron on the world. Maybe she means to finish her vengeance, take the price of all of his failures out of his skin at last, let him go to face Yinsen’s judgement in whatever afterlife Yinsen believed in.

Her words are soft. “I don’t hate you.”

It is as though a weight is gone from his shoulders, as though the scarlet at her fingers is no longer a threat.

“I did,” she says. “But not anymore. There is no  _point_  any more. After everything we have all done...” she trails off, her eyes pass past him to schematics and stacks of parts, to the draws of tools, to Dummy in the corner. “I have as much to apologise for as anyone here, more even. You fought against the monster I helped you make. You fought to save a city you did not know. That is...” Her hands curl, tucking scarlet up into her palms as she extends one hand to him. “It is more than I thought you capable of. And if you can be better, if you can make amends, maybe there is hope for all of us.” 

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments!


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